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The Minimum Viable Kitchen

priceonomics.com

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Re: The Minimum Viable Kitchen

#181

Post by ubercore »

bhousel wrote: post #172
ubercore wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, in my experience. I had a rusted pan I pulled out of the basement, spent 20 minutes scrubbing and rinsing, a couple of rounds in and out of the oven with vegetable shortening, and was non-stick enough already to easily cook eggs. Am I missing a step I should be doing?

Wow, you +1 for teaching me something new. I've been using stupid vegetable oil on a cloth all these years to season my cast iron, and it's the biggest pain in the ass. I never even thought to use shortening.

I think I just read about it on a blog, and I'm pretty new to cast iron myself. But from what I understand, any fat should work.

Re: The Minimum Viable Kitchen

#182

Post by jgraham »

tptacek wrote: post #106
Tarrosion wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few comments: - Stick blenders, at $20, are a steal. - Kitchenaid is a good mixer brand, but Breville also gets very high marks. - If you're going to bake even infrequently, the rolling pin is non-optional. A good solid rolling pin can also be used for whacking things (e.g. butter you want to soften but not melt) and as a cylindrical mold.

There are probably "better" stand mixers than Kitchenaid, but you want to be in the Kitchenaid ecosystem. Having a non-Kitchenaid mixer is like working in the receivables department of a Fortune 500 company and using Linux + OpenOffice. We have a pricy Vitamix blender, but I use my stick blender much more often regardless.

Possibly that's very US-centric advice? I have a Kenwood stand mixer which has better specs than Kitchenaids, which historical precedent suggests will last for decades and which has a large ecosystem of available attachments (I don't know how large in comparison, but frankly for some of the more esoteric things one is better off buying a dedicated tool anyway).

I'm sure a Kitchenaid would have been a great purchase too, but there are definitely multiple viable choices here.

Re: The Minimum Viable Kitchen

#183

Post by Avenger42 »

tptacek wrote: post #165
mattmaroon wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And use grapeseed oil! Expensive but amazing. I use my food processor occasionally. Pie crusts, etc. But most stuff I'd rather do in a Vitamix. I guess maybe I love my blender so much because I love soups and sorbets. And quiche. I use it probably at least twice weekly. And going through that cook book, there are a lot of things that call for it.

And holy shit we both forgot fish sauce. You can't call your kitchen viable without fish sauce!

Any specific recommendations there?

Re: The Minimum Viable Kitchen

#184

Post by DArcMattr »

tptacek wrote: post #87

Notes: * Strong recommend on the Fibrox knife. If you don't already have a serious knife, don't buy one; get the Fibrox and use it for awhile. You may never want another knife, and if you ever do, you'll have a very good idea what you're looking for. Beware of knives: they're Veblen goods. * Don't get the expensive butcher block board. Actively avoid it. If you feel like arguing about this, you're not the reader this…

On the matter of crock pots and slow cookers, that's a redundant piece of equipment. This list already includes a dutch oven, which you can use for the same purpose. The other piece of equipment which you already have is an oven. As long as you've done the work to calibrate your oven (get an oven thermometer), you have what you need.

What temperature is a 5 on the slow cooker? Who knows? 200 F is pretty easy to understand.

Re: The Minimum Viable Kitchen

#185

Post by tptacek »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #174
tptacek wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of them like rigid zip-locs that you can also use for mise en place, to store spices and grains in your cabinet, individual portions of leftovers for eating at the office, vinegar and vegetables for pickling, and perfect portions of stock for freezing. Along with anything else you'd use a zip-loc in the fridge for. The big thing about delis is that you'll simply save a lot more food, because they're so extremel…

What size of deli cups do I need mass quantities of? Do you use the tiny ones that take-out dipping sauce might come in? Or the ones that an order of hot-and-sour soup might come in? Or the ones that an entire Chinese entree might come in? Or the ones that a half-gallon of soup might come in? I'm guessing your answer is "all of the above" but I'm curious. I know where you're coming from, though, because in the last c…

The cups I use are about the size rice comes in from a Chinese or Mexican restaurant, or half the size an order of hot & sour soup comes in. Think large coffee mug.

Re: The Minimum Viable Kitchen

#186

Post by DArcMattr »

jerhinesmith wrote: post #101
tptacek wrote: post #87

Notes: * Strong recommend on the Fibrox knife. If you don't already have a serious knife, don't buy one; get the Fibrox and use it for awhile. You may never want another knife, and if you ever do, you'll have a very good idea what you're looking for. Beware of knives: they're Veblen goods. * Don't get the expensive butcher block board. Actively avoid it. If you feel like arguing about this, you're not the reader this…

Just a note about the pots and pans. All-Clad is nice, but also very expensive. After seeing a few recommendations on reddit, I picked up a Tramontina set from walmart.com (weird, I know). I love them. They're stainless steel, high quality, TryPly-clad pans, and you can pick up an 8-piece (5 total pans + lids) set for ~$130.

I've found some good pans in the second-run stores, like the Marshall's and TJ Maxx family. They may have some cosmetic defects, like a scratch on the outer surface.

The problem with these stores is they have inconsistent stock, which changes all the time depending on what the other stores have shoved off on them.

Re: The Minimum Viable Kitchen

#187

Post by mechanical_fish »

tptacek wrote: post #164
eumenides1 wrote: post #58

I think the post is great, but he made an assumption that wasn't stated and might cause all of us to disagree. He picked a cuisine without saying which one. A MVK will have different sets of equipment depending on the cuisine you choose. A Chinese kitchen will have a wok and a rice cooker, while a French kitchen will have things that you need to make bread. The most important thing is to choose a cuisine and stick to…

American kitchens should probably skip the wok even if they're making Chinese food, because woks are designed for a specific kind of cooktop and are outperformed by large sautee pans otherwise.

I have been told this, and therefore never owned a wok, but I'm now thinking of getting a wok anyway because Kenji (aka "J. Kenji Lopez-Alt" of SeriousEats.com) disagrees, and "follow Kenji around like a zombie and taste what he tastes" is a motto that is serving me well in life so far.

Here's Kenji's non-scientific rant on the subject:

http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/06/wok-skills-101-stir-fryin...

Here's the better-equipped-with-charty-graphy-goodness version:

http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/06/the-food-lab-for-the-best...

Re: The Minimum Viable Kitchen

#188

Post by notJim »

mattmaroon wrote: post #57
notJim wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconding this, I skipped the whisk for my kitchen, and it's fucking impossible to whisk stuff with a fork.

Out of curiosity, why would one skip a whisk? They're cheap. They take up very little room. I use one so much I bought a second.

I didn't know I would need it, and was buying only the very minimum number of things. (For example, I also didn't get a garlic masher which is small and cheap—less useful, but again I didn't know how useful a whisk was yet.)

Re: The Minimum Viable Kitchen

#189

Post by ChuckMcM »

tptacek wrote: post #87

Notes: * Strong recommend on the Fibrox knife. If you don't already have a serious knife, don't buy one; get the Fibrox and use it for awhile. You may never want another knife, and if you ever do, you'll have a very good idea what you're looking for. Beware of knives: they're Veblen goods. * Don't get the expensive butcher block board. Actively avoid it. If you feel like arguing about this, you're not the reader this…

As it turns out my wife is quite a good cook (no she doesn't pay me to say that :-) I somehow managed to make one of the best purchases in my life when I bought her a Kitchenaid 4.5qt mixer for her Birthday back in the early 80's. At the time these mixers were actually made by Hobart which makes professional mixers for bakeries, and god help them they just could not make an inferior mixer if their life depended on it. Then in the early 2000's Kitchenaid switched vendors for their 'entry level' mixers and the quality suffered greatly. The priceonomics guys could show you this by pricing out Hobart Kitchenaids vs non-Hobart Kitchenaids on ebay. The good news is, you can get a 20 year old Hobart Kitchenaid mixer and restore it to 'as new' condition, parts are readily available and they are pretty easy to work on.

Re: The Minimum Viable Kitchen

#190

Post by cowpewter »

pbnjay wrote: post #75

If you were to get only one cookbook ever, the best bang for your buck and the one that gets the most use at my house is the Joy of Cooking. It's $22 and has thousands of recipes from salad dressings to pot pies to all that fancy-shmancy stuff. http://www.amazon.com/Joy-Cooking-75th-Anniversary-2006/dp/0...

I would definitely recommend the Joy of Cooking, it's truly a cookbook and not just a compilation of recipes, going into theory and whys and hows, something you can really learn from and not just follow route directions, but I would try to make an effort to find a copy of the 1975 edition (something published before 1997!)

In the 90s, they totally changed JoC, removing whole sections and modifying a bunch of the recipes to be "healthier" (read low-fat). I much prefer having the original recipes and then be able to choose my own substitutions if I want to modify them.

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